The Perils of Pleasure (34 page)

The two men looked at each other. Each nearly phys
ically recoiled.

And then, of course, couldn’t resist staring back at each other again. And . . . their eyes met. Because, as Colin noticed before, they were precisely the same height.

The blood fled Colin’s extremities, leaving his hands, his face, cold. The problem was . . . the problem was this: it
seemed
possible. Colin’s eyes. His height—he was taller than all of his brothers and his father. And then there was the bemused distance at which his father, Jacob Eversea, had always held him.

He glanced at Madeleine, and he saw, crossing her face, the same sort of assessment, the same curious wonder. She was drawing the same conclusions, and if
Madeleine
thought it could be possible . . .

Deny it
, he wanted to scream to Redmond. Instead, he stared at the man, unseeing, and his palms began to sweat as he remembered Olivia and Lyon and the leg
endary fatal flaw of the Eversea and Redmond feud.

An Eversea and a Redmond were destined to break each other’s hearts once per generation.

Oh, God.

“The thing with secrets, Isaiah,” Fanchette contin
ued, addressing her husband now in a gently reproving, silkily contemptuous voice, “is that mothers cannot be trusted to keep them when the lives of their chil
dren are at stake. I received a letter from Mrs. Eversea a few weeks ago begging for my help. She knows I loathe all things Eversea, but she was convinced, you see, that
you
had something to do with the convic
tion of her son. After all, every one of the petitions for Colin’s freedom was quietly thwarted. And she begged my forgiveness very succinctly—really more of a formality, the forgiveness begging, I think—but confessed that she strongly believes that Colin is your son. You can imagine my shock.” She shifted her gaze to Colin. “I didn’t believe in your innocence for an instant, Mr. Eversea, but no mother can believe her son can do murder, and Mrs. Jacob Eversea is no exception. And Isaiah . . .” She turned back to her husband. “I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t allow you to kill your own son.”

Isaiah’s hand came up to his face then, shading his brow. The hand was trembling a little. Colin saw his shoulders move with the deep breath, and with that breath came a return of his composure, and the hand came down.

And Colin couldn’t help but think of grace in unten
able circumstances. Did he get it from Redmond?

“Fanchette . . . ” Redmond’s voice was so quiet it was nearly tentative. “Did you really believe I would do such a thing to Colin Eversea?”

Not “Colin.” Not “Mr. Eversea.” But
Colin Eversea
.

“I believe that you hate the Everseas, Isaiah,” Mrs. Redmond said quietly. “For many, many reasons.”

Redmond was silent again. His emotions were con
tained entirely in his eyes and his voice and the gray shade of his face.

Colin suddenly very much wanted to sit down, and felt an ass for wanting it. Madeleine was watching him now, those dark eyes holding him up with kindness. And the kindness irrationally irritated Colin at that moment, because he needed it.

“Mrs. Eversea thought I might hold some infl uence with you,” Mrs. Redmond continued, addressing her husband. “But I couldn’t risk coming to you, Isaiah, because I believed you were the one who’d arranged for Mr. Peele to disappear. So I took matters into my own hands. Rather well, too, as it turned out.” She sounded faintly pleased.

“So it was
you
who blackmailed all of these people, Mrs. Redmond?” Colin’s mind was boggling. “How did you manage to—”

“Oh, no,” Fanchette sounded bemused again. “Blackmail, you say? Were people blackmailed?
Tsk
. Well, if anyone was blackmailed, it’s all because Isaiah took away my allowance. Isaiah, you made me
beg
Baxter for money. And I’m a Redmond, and a Tarbell by birth. I should not
beg
for anything.” Coldly in
structional now, her voice. “And so I turned the tables on Baxter.”

“
Baxter
helped you with this, Fanchette?” Red-mond’s voice, remarkably, was still steady.

“Well, as I hadn’t an allowance, Isaiah, I hadn’t the funds to pay for Colin Eversea’s rescue. I went to plead with Baxter to release funds to me. The man was
rude
.” Mrs. Redmond flushed even now at the memory. “He
refused to release one farthing to me. But one of
my
se
crets, Isaiah, is that I’m more intelligent than you think I am. So I told him that I knew about his affair with the new maid, Miss Daisy Poe, and that I would have him fired if he didn’t do as I asked. In short, I made him
pay
for his contempt. And because we couldn’t use any more of the Redmond money without your noticing, Isaiah, I told him to try to finance the rescue of Colin Eversea with secrets, in the way that I’d coerced him into doing my bidding. Thus he became
my
servant. He worked for both of us, Isaiah. Isn’t that funny?”

Her tone was peculiar. She sounded bitter, and half delighted. “He certainly did his job, anyhow, Baxter did, because Colin Eversea was rescued, and not one
farthing
of your precious money was spent on the rescue in the process, Isaiah.”

Good God. Colin thought: the past week of his life took place in large part because Fanchette Redmond was
denied an allowance
.

His mind rifled through the sequence of events: Daisy Poe, Mary Poe’s sister, had told Baxter about Critchley the Resurrectionist, who told Baxter about Dr. August purchasing the bodies. Baxter had black
mailed Dr. August into telling him about the countess and Harry, and with that information Baxter had black
mailed Harry into becoming the unwilling, anonymous messenger carrying funds and messages to the Tiger’s Nest. And in exchange for hiding Horace Peele away in Mutton Cottage, Critchley was given use of the Mer
cury Club carriage for swift transportation of bodies to sell to Edinburgh, and Robert Bell had been the driver. And Baxter had arranged to pay Madeleine and Horace from the raise in wages he’d been given—or had given himself. He must have been desperate at that point.

And then, no doubt, he’d tried to kill Madeleine when he couldn’t come up with the final 150 pounds.

But Robert Bell had been hired to do the driving of the Mercury Club carriage, and Mr. Baxter had recorded his own rise in pay, and his own meticulous record keeping had been his downfall. Marcus had seen it, and so had Redmond.

Colin supposed he would never know for certain whether Isaiah Redmond hired the man, or whether the man did it of his own volition.

“So secrets are the currency with which I managed to pay for Colin’s life,” Fanchette Redmond concluded. “And now one of
your
secrets is standing alive in front of you, Isaiah.”

“He is not my father.” Colin repeated the words with a quiet menace.

“Well, I can show you the letter from your mother, dear,” Fanchette continued mildly. “I honestly wouldn’t have exerted myself to the extent that I did if I hadn’t received it. Perhaps it was just a ploy to enlist my help in the matter of freeing you. Then again, most women don’t put that sort of thing about lightly, particularly to someone they no doubt consider an enemy. If you ask your mother about it, she might deny it. It’s certainly what
I
would do, particularly now that you’re alive. And though, Mr. Eversea, I cannot truthfully say that I believed in your innocence, I do know what it’s like to lose a son. And I am not inhumane.”

Isaiah Redmond remained silent. The color hadn’t returned to his face, but his back remained straight, and he was staring at his wife as though he’d never seen her before in his life.

It was a look, truthfully, that contained more than a little fascination.

In the heavy silence of that room, Colin wanted to reach out to touch Madeleine, whose eyes had never once left him. She’d wanted him to feel her as an ally, he knew.

At last Isaiah Redmond turned his head slowly and glanced down at Colin’s pistol.

Colin sighed, locked his weapon and lowered it, then tucked it away in his coat. He hoped it was the last time he ever aimed a pistol at anyone.

He glanced at Madeleine. She locked and lowered her own pistol.

“Fanchette.” Redmond said his wife’s name. If Colin didn’t know better, he would have thought that nearly toneless word contained a hint of a plea.

“You shouldn’t have taken away my allowance, Isaiah,” Mrs. Redmond said simply.

The two Redmonds locked eyes for a good long time. Colin thought he’d never been in a more quiet room. Still, he had the peculiar sense that their marriage had just been immeasurably improved.

And then Colin thought: to hell with justice. Perhaps there was no such thing as justice. Just fate. He was alive. He’d found Horace Peele. He was tired of Red
monds and icy silences. He wanted to go home, breathe in sea air, roll down a green Sussex hill, drink a pint of dark at the Pig & Thistle, not look at a Redmond for a good long time . . . and of course, there was a little matter of a wedding. Alas, the Redmonds were of course invited to the wedding.

“You say you’ve found Horace Peele, Mr. Eversea?” Redmond’s voice was calm as he turned at last to speak to Colin.

“I’ve found Horace Peele,” Colin said tautly. “He’s safe. He’s in your drawing room with a big dog who drools.”

He knew a childish delight when a twitch of dismay jumped in Redmond’s cheek over the big dog in the drawing room.

“Then take him to the Home Secretary,” Redmond said, “and have him make a statement about your in
nocence. I’m sure you’ll be freed quickly enough.”

“But Baxter tried to kill Mad—”

“Colin.” Madeleine’s lovely low voice stopped him.

He stopped, abashed. He’d simply wanted justice for
her
. Baxter had shot at this extraordinary woman; she might have been dead. But Colin didn’t want to betray Madeleine as the mastermind behind the British gov-ernment’s humiliation—his abduction straight from the gallows—and clearly, Mrs. Redmond didn’t know precisely who had orchestrated it. Baxter had been the messenger for everything.

“Were you going to introduce us to your friend, Mr. Eversea?” Redmond was sounding ironic again. And studying Madeleine, appreciation flared in his green gaze. That male instinct was difficult to combat, after all.

“No,” Colin said flatly. “We’re leaving.” Somehow keeping Madeleine’s name to himself seemed a way to protect her from all of this, at least for now. She was probably feeling nostalgic for redcoats and pointed pis
tols. Good, straightforward,
honest
trouble.

“If you came by hackney, take the Mercury Club carriage,” Isaiah Redmond suggested suddenly. “Mr. Bell will drive. You’ll get to Pennyroyal Green more quickly.”

Colin stared at Isaiah Redmond. But what would it mean if it were true? To either him or Redmond? The undercurrent of that question shimmered in the air.

Colin gave a curt nod. “Thank you.”

“We’ll see you at the wedding, then, in Pennyroyal Green?” Fanchette said sweetly as Colin and Madeleine walked past them.

For heaven’s sake. But then again, everyone in Pen
nyroyal Green was invited.

“You’ll see me at the wedding,” he vowed.

The next few hours passed in a nearly conversation-free, breakneck blur.

The driver was roused from the carriage house, the carriage harnessed, and their first quick stop was Madeleine’s lodgings in a decent but unremarkable part of London. Madeleine had been surprised, but Colin insisted.

And Colin and Madeleine crept up the stairs with pistols drawn, force of habit, really, which turned out to be unnecessary, as no one was lying in wait to kill her.

And whereas a day earlier Colin might have hap
pily watched her dress and undress, he instead waited outside the door with Snap and Horace and hissed
“Hurry!”
several times while Madeleine changed into clean linens and a fresh dress and one of her own bon
nets, and emerged a new woman.

“How would you like to go to a wedding, Horace?” Colin asked. He would deal with Horace and his own innocence in a day or so by paying a visit to the Home Secretary. He needed to get to Sussex
now
.

“Oh, I love weddin’s!” Horace proclaimed.

And so the Mercury Club carriage did indeed nearly become a fi ery winged chariot as it took them at an as
tonishing, reckless speed to Pennyroyal Green.

And on the way there, Horace and Madeleine fi lled the carriage with polite chatter for a time, but all con
versation eventually foundered under the weight of Colin’s silence. He was peering avidly out the window as though the passing countryside were an oracle, as if there he could find the answers to all the questions and conundrums that quadrilled in his head. He stared at it as though he hadn’t seen it a million times before, in every condition, in every mood, from horseback and every type of carriage. He stared at it, rifling, as he’d done on the way to the gallows, through images and impressions and memories. It all looked entirely new, because he was an entirely different man now.